Summer School Newsletter 2016

What a busy summer it has been! We cannot believe how fast the last 5 weeks went by! We had so much fun as we made our transition from the Kindergarten hallway to the first grade hallway! We got new lockers outside of the classroom, and sat at desk instead of tables! We worked on our sight words and addition problems. We even got to tie dye t-shirts! It was so fun to see the colors change our shirt! We are ready for 1st grade! Ms. Aguiar & Ms. Hickey

This summer in Mrs. Thacker’s and Miss Calabrese’s 1st grade class we worked very hard on reading, math, and writing. The students were able to discover under water creatures through art and writing with Miss Smotherman’s 2nd grade class. We also benefited from Mrs. Finn’s 5th grade reading buddies. The 1st graders and 5th graders took turns reading to each other and our class really enjoyed having these reading buddies on Thursdays. Every student this summer was able to benefit from reading one on one with a teacher as well as an older student. We also worked very hard on addition and subtraction through word problems. It has been a great summer and I hope that your child enjoyed it as much as we did.

What a summer! The 2nd grade children have been learning and reviewing through the use of fun, game-based activities. Every day, the children move through different centers which focus on reading and math. The reading centers include work on phonics and spelling with a focus on Dolch sight words and “tricky words” from the Jolly Phonics curriculum. The math centers focus on basic addition and subtraction, words problems, and counting. The children also visited the computer lab twice a week to explore educational websites. On Thursdays, their 6th grade buddies came in a read to them, and on Tuesdays, they has speech with Ms. McNally. Each week they made a craft. The children made a foam visors, Finding Dori posters, and a 4th of July firework picture. The teachers are very proud of how hard the 2nd grade children worked this summer. Enjoy the rest of your summer! Mrs. Perry and Mrs. Sharp

We really had fun diving into learning this summer with our “Under the Sea” theme. Every morning we started off with a delicious and healthy breakfast. After breakfast, we would complete morning work, which consisted of writing, drawing, and coloring. Then we would do literacy groups. During our literacy groups we learned about various ocean animals. We learned about crabs, jelly fish, puffer fish, and much more! We did a project for every animal that we learned about and created an awesome ocean in our classroom! When literacy groups were done, we had snack and recess. During snack, we loved listening to music and singing along! After recess, we either joined our friends in Mrs. Thacker’s class for arts and crafts, went to computers, or had math groups. During math groups, we worked on story problems, shapes, money, numbers, and addition and subtraction combinations. We had oceans of fun and learned a lot this summer! Congratulations on o-fish-ally being 3rd graders! Ms. Smotherman, Mrs. Kordas, and Ms. Amy

Summer school has had us very busy “soaking up” lots of information. We have been learning about a variety of ocean animals and topics including anemone, coral reefs, Sargassum Fish, Plumed Worms, and Cleaner Gobies. We learned many things such as where they live in the ocean, what they eat, and how they survive. Go ahead and read the “My Ocean Journal” to see the creative writing we have done! We hope you like our Ocean diorama project. Can you spot an octopus in the water or a seahorse in Gorgonian coral? We worked very hard on this project. Want to be amazed? Go ahead and read the facts that each of us thought of and typed during computer time. We practiced our place value as we “popped” numbers, broke numbers apart, and played Bingo. We enhanced our adding and subtracting skills. We were able to identify antonyms and synonyms, fix spelling and capitalization mistakes, and “spot” where the apostrophe went during our Railroad game. “Choo-Choo”! Reading can be tough, but it is no match for us! We read passages about the ocean in which we learned many new things and we were able to practice high-frequency words within them. It was a lot of work, but it was well worth it! Please continue to practice with us at home so we are ready for 4th grade Have a wonderful summer, Mrs. Stelmack, Mrs. Leo, and Mrs. Santoro

The 4th graders in Mrs. Finn's and Miss Molony's classroom have had a great time this summer as they took part in class activities and applied their reading and writing skills to learn about the ocean. They viewed videos and read informational text about the ocean and ocean animals. The class celebrated “World Ocean Day” and learned about how important the ocean is to all life on earth. Throughout the summer, students learned about the 5 oceans, ocean habitats, ocean conservation, and ocean animals. Students worked on a class project by researching different ocean animals to create “Our ABC Ocean Book”. Their research included finding out about the appearance, diet, habitat, and interesting facts about different ocean animals. After completing their research, each student selected one animal and created a power-point presentation and diorama for their animal. Throughout summer school, students read the novel Dolphins at Daybreak by Mary Pope Osborne. In this novel, Annie and Jack take a mini-sub deep into the ocean as they solve a riddle to become master librarians. Students learned vocabulary, applied comprehension skills, and discussed the plot as they read this enjoyable story. Students also read nonfiction books such as “The Rainbow Fish” and discussed the themes of these stories.

The 4th graders also worked on math activities throughout the summer. These activities were individualized and included skill building and math fluency activities to help students prepare for 5th grade. Mrs. Finn and Miss Molony

Someone is sabotaging the school play! Or at least that is what is happening in our novel, No More Dead Dogs by Gordon Korman. The students have been very busy reading the novel and using text evidence to make predictions to determine who is the guilty party. When we are not working on our novel, we are practicing our fluency skills by reading different informational texts and conducting an analysis of the passage to test our comprehension. We have also been practicing our math skills by working on word problems, operations, fractions, multiplication, and division. Additionally, we have been working on our typing by accepting new challenges and graphing our progress in preparation for getting our Chromebooks! Needless to say, it has been a very busy summer and there is no doubt that these students will be ready for the halls of Simmons Middle School as 6th graders. Mrs. Freeman & Ms. Stuczynski

Our future sixth graders have been doing great work this summer! We are working on our summer reading novel, No More Dead Dogs by Gordon Korman. This book is on the Simmons summer reading list and will give the students some extra credit before the year even starts. We have been working on our typing skills in the computer lab to prepare for the Chrome Books that are coming very soon. We have also been working on perfecting our math facts to get ready for sixth grade. It has been a great summer so far! Mrs. Koziokas and Mr. Turner

Ms. LaBelle’s summer school class has been hard at work for the last five weeks! During our time together, we have had so much fun! We spent our mornings practicing writing our names, addresses, phone numbers, and family information in our work binders. Next, we sang, danced, and practiced our calendar skills. Before we knew it, it was time for our daily 5 centers. Ms. Raziq taught us our touch-point numbers and played really fun math games with us. Mrs. K helped us read and practice our sight words. After working hard all morning, we ended our day by reading a book and choosing a super fun brain break for the class. It’s hard to believe our time together is already over and we cannot wait for the school year to start! Ms. LaBelle, Mrs. Kusustrin, Ms. Razik

Our future fourth, fifth, and sixth graders have been working really hard this summer. We have read a variety of different stories about animals, rain forests, and stars in the sky. We also spent time perfecting our addition, subtraction, and multiplication. As a class, we played a variety of math games where we practiced using our strategies. Every day the students enjoyed snack and recess time with their friends from other classes while enjoying the nice summer weather. Overall, it has been a great summer so far! Ms.Schaefer and Ms. Rucin

This summer, our classes has been working hard! Students completed an ocean animal research project that incorporated life cycles, vocabulary, and biology. Students enjoy math centers where we have been focusing on money, sequencing, and multiplication. Students are improving their reading fluency and comprehension by participating in daily reading centers which include Read Naturally and Reading Milestones. Students are also increasing reading comprehension, ability to make connections to literature, and ability to make realistic predictions by reading our summer novel: Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. The students are really enjoying the story, great job class! Students have worked very hard, keep up the wonderful work!! Mrs. Norkus and Mrs. Antonopoulos

Mrs. Omiecinski and Mrs. Garcia's class has been busy diving into our summer reading book, "Life as we knew it," writing, and math! Students have been actively engaged in reading this twisted plot about a family's life that has been flipped upside down from an asteroid hitting the very moon we all take for granted. Devastation swept the United States and families came together to problem solve how to survive for the days and weeks to come... The story does not end there, students are encouraged to read ahead in the series to see what happens to Miranda's family. All of our hard work has paid off and we finished our summer reading challenge! In Math, we've been working on perfecting our graphing, rounding, word problems, and fraction skills. Along with challenging ourselves with our typing words per minute, our class has done amazing job with their creative writing assignments. Overall, this has been an amazing summer and we are so proud of every single one of you! See you in August!

What a great start to summer! The 8th grade students have been reading the novel, Shadow Club Rising. This is the sequel to a novel that we read throughout the school year. We were able to take advantage of the nice weather and read outside. We have been working on our reading strategies throughout the novel. We have also been improving our typing skills. In math we have been reviewing the order of operations and solving for variables. We have also been practicing graphing throughout summer school. The students practiced finding averages and percentages by comparing our basketball skills to the shooting percentages of real NBA players. What a fun way to learn! Ms. Cosich and Mr. Blabas

Mr. Beemsterboer and Mr. Kuzanek’s summer school class has had so much fun the past 5 weeks. There has been a great deal of excitement and academic progress. Each day students practiced letters, numbers, colors, counting, and calendar during circle time. We sang songs to help us remember the days of the week and letter sounds. Students practices spelling, tracing, making, writing, and saying their names each day. We had lots of fun playing on the playground and in the gymnasium during gross motor time playing on the slides, swings, and monkey bars. All the students participated in play based learning through building blocks, playdoh, kinetic sand, legos, and dramatic play. Students have been practicing many skills including following directions, social interactions, and following classroom routines. The students’ favorite thing has been learning about sea creatures and making crafts for each one. Each day, students earn ‘Brag Tags’ that show the skill they achieve for that day. They really love the positive reinforcement! All the students made so much progress throughout the summer and we are very proud of them!

It has been a fun summer in the preschool SLP room! I can’t believe the end is already here! We were proud to watch the children learning our school routines in a new environment. This summer, we learned about ocean animals. Our class enjoyed acting like the ocean animals through songs and making fun art projects! When we weren’t singing and dancing, we were learning how to play with toys, interacting with our friends, and spending tons of time outside. It’s safe to say their favorite part of summer school was the pool! We were lucky to be able to spend hot days splashing around in the water. I hope everyone has a fun and safe summer break! See you in August! Ms. Russell, Ms. Czarnecki, and Ms. Vallejo

Ms. Ghilarducci’s SLP class had a blast diving into the ocean and exploring the sea animals! We learned about crabs, turtles, whales, and many more underwater animals. During circle time, we reinforced these concepts through patterns, matching, and phonemic sounds. We even got to create a variety of sea creatures during art time. Finally, our favorite part of summer school was splashing around in the pool and learning to blow bubbles under water! Ms. Ghilarducci, Ms. Moran, and Ms. Noland